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The information network, which has become a near-essential tool for tracking real-time news, handled a swell of traffic on Election Day in the US with ease.

"Wow. The tweets they are many. Incredible," said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. (That studied ineloquence is a signature example of Costolo's dry wit.)

Precisely how many? When the TV networks called the election for Barack Obama around 11:19 Eastern Time, they peaked at 327,453 per minute, according to Twitter.

It was the most-tweeted moment of the election, but it didn't even rate in the top 10 most-tweeted moments ever. Those are generally measured in tweets per second, not minute. The Oscars, for example, topped out at more than 18,000 tweets per second. 327,453 tweets a minute translates to an average of 5,458 tweets per second.

An hour before the election was called, Twitter had said that people had posted a total of 20 million tweets related to the event on Tuesday.

Whether or not it was a record, it was a technical feat keeping up with the pace, as Twitter product chief Michael Sippey acknowledged.

"Bowing down to @twittereng," he wrote as a shoutout to the company's engineers.